Exhibition to Examine Balthazar, a Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance European Art

Curators seek your feedback on an exhibition-in-progress on one of the most prominent African figures in old master European painting

Detail of The Adoration of the Magi from a Book of Hours showing the magus Balthazar (right), about 1480–90, Georges Trubert. Tempera colors, gold leaf, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment, 4 1/2 × 3 3/8 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 48 (93.ML.6), fol. 59. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program

Early medieval written legends report that one of the three kings who paid homage to the Christ Child in Bethlehem was from Africa. But it would take nearly 1,000 years for European artists to begin representing Balthazar, the youngest of the three kings, as a black man. Why? The explanation can be found through a closer look at the history of this period—specifically, in the rise of the African slave trade in mid-1400s.

Delving into the Getty’s collections, we are at work on the exhibition Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art (November 19, 2019–February 17, 2020). We are examining how Balthazar’s depiction coincided with and was furthered by the rise of the slave trade—and we invite your input to inform the exhibition. What questions or ideas do you have about this topic? What stories or themes would you like to see explored? We are eager to incorporate your views into our process. To comment publicly, leave a comment below or get in touch with us on social media @gettymuseum; to reach us individually, email us at manuscripts@getty.edu and we will reply directly.

To give context for the exhibition, in this post we’ll introduce the story of the Magi, and give an example of how Balthazar’s depiction intersects with the history of Western colonialism.

Who Were the Magi?

The Adoration of the Magi was a common subject in European art. The New Testament recounts that sometime after Jesus’s birth the Holy Family was visited by gift-bearing Easterners called magi. Magos was a Greek word for a Persian priest or dream interpreter.

The Gospel accounts of Christ’s birth do not specify the number of magi, nor their names. But beginning around the third century, writers interpreted the Magi as three kings based on the three types of gifts they brought to the infant: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, each a costly material associated with a distant land. Later writers assigned them names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, and specified that the kings came from the three continents then known to those living in the Mediterranean world: Africa, Asia, and Europe. Writing in the eighth century, an author known to us only as Pseudo-Bede mentioned “a dark, fully bearded king called Balthazar.”

Yet despite further written descriptions of Balthazar as a black African, European artists continued to represent him as a white king for centuries. In the earliest example of the Adoration of the Magi in the Getty’s collection, the three kings are virtually identical. Only Caspar, the eldest, is distinguished by his gray beard and slightly longer robes.

The Development of Balthazar’s Image

The African identity of the third Magus was alluded to in European art for the first time in 1266, when artist Nicola Pisano sculpted two African attendants in a scene with the Magi. Their features and hair clearly identify them as sub-Saharan Africans; this identification is underscored by the camels they ride.

Adoration of the Magi on the pulpit of the Cathedral of Siena, 1265–68, Nicola Pisano. Photo: Sailko, licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0). Source: Wikimedia Commons

This convention—to depict Balthazar as white, but to associate him with Africa by depicting him with a black African attendant—is found in other examples in European art in subsequent centuries. In the painting below, for example, Balthazar is depicted as a young white king accompanied by a black page (servant). The page, at far right, supports a golden object shaped like an elephant tusk, similar to ivory tusks that were carved or used as drinking horns in medieval Europe. He hands the vessel, which presumably contains liquid myrrh, to Balthazar to give to the Christ Child.

A choir book from almost a century later likewise depicts one of the Magi with a black African attendant.

At the end of the fifteenth century, things change. Suddenly, we see a larger number of images in European art depicting Balthazar as either associated with Africa through costume, or painted as an African. In our manuscripts collection alone, we have four images of Balthazar as a black African. These illuminations, found within personal prayer books, were all created right around 1480/90—precisely the period in which the Portuguese slave trade began on the west coast of Africa.

Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art

The label stated, “The late fifteenth-century black African magus is a paradoxical figure. His presence reveals the racial diversity in Europe at a time when ecumenical church councils welcomed delegates from Ethiopia to Florence and Rome. At the same time, however, Europeans began to engage in the brutal African slave trade.”

This manuscript elicited by far the most curiosity and passion of any object in the exhibition. Some visitors felt they could see themselves in the history and art on the Getty’s walls and wanted to know more. Others were offended at being confronted with a telling of history that included colonialism and slavery.

We were familiar with the link between the depiction of Balthazar as a black African ruler and the rise of slavery, first explored through the groundbreaking research of Paul Kaplan. The fascinating history of Balthazar in art is not broadly known to the general public, however—and presented itself as an opportunity for a meaningful new exhibition.

The Adoration of the Magi, about 1495–1505, Andrea Mantegna. Distemper on linen, 19 1/8 × 25 13/16 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 85.PA.417. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program

One of the Getty’s great paintings of the Adoration, by Andrea Mantegna, reveals the artist’s awareness of lands beyond Italy. Associations with Africa are apparent not only in Balthazar’s complexion and costume but also in the container he holds. The object appears to be made from alabaster, a semi-precious stone imported from Africa and highly valued by medieval and Renaissance Europeans.

Mantegna worked as the official court painter to Isabella d’Este, marchioness of Mantua, and her husband, the Marquis Francesco. This painting was created during the same period in which Mantegna was in their employ. Both Isabella and Francesco were known to have had black African slaves and servants. Isabella purchased a number of African children, one of whom, Maystro Petro, was nine years old in 1499. (A document refers to Maystro Petro in Latin as a “sclavem ethiopiem,” meaning Ethiopian slave, although the word Ethiopian was at times used as a catchall for “African.”) He may have been too young to have inspired the figure of Balthazar in this painting—but could Balthazar’s appearance have been informed by another of the enslaved peoples in her household?

Europeans and Africans, from antiquity, had engaged in the trade of captive humans. But in the late 1400s the trade in slaves from sub-Saharan Africa escalated in ways previously unimaginable, industrializing the practice and bringing thousands—ultimately millions—of enslaved peoples into Europe and the Americas. This practice forever changed the world in ways that continue to be felt today.

The exhibition will include this painting and other objects, alongside medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, to tell a fuller story of the figure of Balthazar and the longer histories of material trade networks between Africa and Europe. By exploring how his depiction coincided with and was furthered by the rise of the slave trade, we hope to enrich our understanding of artworks in our collection. We invite your input on this work, our approach, and what we have shared here.

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11 Comments

Barbara Fields
on May 9, 2019 at 6:31 pm

A great topic! The shifting images of the three magi has always puzzled me.
In the Mantegna work, I have focused on the three gifts: metal, stone, and porcelain.
The early 15th century Yongle porcelain bowl is a rarity because there was no direct trade yet between Asia and Europe. If it was an object in the Gonzaga family, it must have been obtained through Middle Eastern intermediaries. It was an antique at the time of the painting making it somewhat exotic and therefore suitable for a gift to the Christ child.
The Getty handbook of the collections describes the stone as carved agate, but alabaster makes more sense.

Greetings Barbara Fields. Thank you for your comment. The materials in the Mantegna are indeed interesting and have inspired much discussion (alabaster vs. agate, the material of the so-called “Turkish censer”, and of course the Ming porcelain. Irene Backus wrote a fantastic dissertation at the University of Chicago (2014) called, “Asia Materialized: Perception of China in Renaissance Florence,” a section of which discusses porcelain at other Italian courts, including the Gonzaga / Este in Mantua/Ferrara. Such examples of blue-and-white Chinese porcelain would indeed have passed through intermediaries before making their way into Europe. I’ve been fascinated by the range of blue-and-white wares produced in the Mediterranean at the time: in Venice, Caffaggiolo, Valencia, Majorca, Iznik, and later in Delft and elsewhere.

I am a Museum Studies, Masters Degree, student at JHU, a late in life returning student. I find this focus and request for comments extremely encouraging, from a process perspective, and while I am not an expert in the area of focus, I certainly have questions.

Do you plan to offer an overview of world trade routes and connections establishing a baseline, preceding the period under consideration and especially during the years in focus? While I agree that depictions of the Magi in art/manuscripts is directly related to the rarity of personal contact and/or experience I believe that world trade routes offer some indication of cross cultural contact and while Sub-Saharan contact was most likely rare there was movement of peoples via trade.

A quick follow-up via JSTOR suggests a continuing effort is needed to try to better describe the history of cross continental contact as this article suggests a perspective that may aid in developing supporting materials associated with the exhibition. See Bentley, J. (1998). Hemispheric Integration, 500-1500 C.E. Journal of World History, 9(2), 237-254. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20078730 . Just seems to me that an expansive overview of the issues within this exhibit will support/demand more background materials/insight, and will likely help all visitors, in person or via the wonderful Getty Web experience. A detailed background brief detailing demographics and cross-cultural connections would be very helpful. This is in addition to the more focused interpretive material focus on the exhibited material.

You might want to consult Elmer Kolfin of Amsterdam University – see his article on a black model in Abraham Bloemaert paintings; and Mark Ponte of Amsterdam’s City Archives who is doing research into black people in Amsterdam in the 17th century. See his blog: http://voetnoot.org/research/

I’m glad that you are planning an exhibition about Balthazar the black king!

In a personal poetry project in French I have recently been interested in his representation by Bosch, Memling and Maarten de Vos (1599). I have noticed the recurrent motif of the thistle, as well as the golden color in his clothing or the gift of myrrh being presented in a gilt mother of pearl shell or a golden dragon.

Do you have any information, interpretation about these particular details?

More generally speaking, Balthazar seems to me to be the most colorfully dressed, in rather “campy” style in contrast with the two other kings… Is that simply due to the foreign origins of the African king, to portray him as “exotic”? or could a more “queer” interpretation emerge?

As I live in Switzerland and am not planning on coming to visit your museum, I would be glad if you could send me any documents, catalogues related to your future exhibition.

Thank you for these excellent observations and questions. The thistle is often a symbol of death (see Genesis 3:17-18) or of Christ’s Passion. I wonder if the thistle might also refer to the so-called “Curse of Ham,” the third son of Noah often associated with Africa? Elena Calas wrote an article in Art Journal (1969-70) in which she discusses the thistle in Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” noting its placement near the mulberry (a play on the word “mors-mora” or Black Death).

And I love your idea about the campy / queer potentiality of dress in Magi imagery. There is certainly a lot to unpack here, from the early origins of Magi imagery (where the individuals appear as “magicians” wearing vaguely Phrygian / Parthian / Zoroastrian garments) to the 15th/16th century images that cast the rulers in contemporaneous dress (including depictions of Balthazar as a Black African or eventually to including an Amerindian figure, as in the painting by Vasco Fernandes / Francisco Henriques that references Tupinamba attire). The ceremony and “exotic”/foreign nature of Magi imagery could arguably fall within the category of camp (see the current Metropolitan Museum of Art fashion exhibition on the topic of Camp). Thank you again!

We are students in an Art History course, and we are eager to see the proposed exhibition. From reading your initial ideas, we have the following questions.

1. You write that visitors responded negatively to discussions of racism and colonialism when they saw the Outsiders show. How will you respond to these reactions with the upcoming show on the Black Magus?

2. Is the idea of this exhibit that the connection between the representation of Balthasar as black is the result of an increased presence of Black Africans in Europe resulting from the trade in enslaved humans, or are there other reasons? We’re wondering how you’re going to develop these connections.

3. Will you include images that depict Balthasar as white? How will you try to convey the historical reality of who the African king might have been?

4. Would you describe the image of Balthasar as white as a kind of whitewashing? Was his whiteness part of making him blend in with the other two kings, or did Balthasar’s whiteness portray his holiness in a society that equated whiteness with goodness and blackness with evil?

Greetings, and thank you for these excellent questions. Kristen and I have definitely been discussing the points you’ve raised. Here are some of my own quick thoughts:

1. We should note that only some visitors responded negatively, and that in general, we received very positive feedback from visitors onsite and online (white supremacists aside). We found that the case-study model worked really well with “Outcasts,” which allowed us to take a deeper dive into a single object and to focus on its historical context rather than making generalizations about, say, “homophobia” or misogyny in deep time or across vast geographies. We’ll take the same approach with “Balthazar,” and we’ll be open to dialogue, debate, and discussion grounded in respect, history, and the works of art.

2. In the introductory text for the show, we summarize over thirty-five years of scholarship about the topic, arguing that the enslavement of Black Africans and their presence in Europe lead to the rise in Balthazar’s representation as a Black African. We also note that there are longer histories of contact between Africa and Europe — trade and church councils included — and that the historical circumstances of the late fifteenth century cast Balthazar as a paradoxical figure.

3 and 4. For nearly one thousand years, Balthazar (and indeed each of the kings) was depicted as a white individual (sometimes distinguished as youthful), despite an equally long history of theological writings that describe him as a Black African (with a full beard, and so forth). We will include the earliest example from our collection of the Adoration of the Magi (from a Benedictional made c.1030-40 in Rebensburg), as well as examples from 14th century Armenia, early 15th century Paris, and late 15th century Naples. We will feature three examples from between 1480 and 1530 that show Balthazar as a Black African king. An example of whitewashing in the show will be a depiction of the Queen of Sheba as white. Kristen has worked on another fascinating Magi image in the collection, which she can address in greater detail. We’re working on a panel that considers the language of race, religion, and slavery — which is always determined at the local level, making the case study approach quite practical in the exhibition (the 13th-century Kingdom of Aragon in Northeastern Spain was very different from late-15th century Mantua/Ferrara, despite the fact that people may have used similar words for describing people and commodities, or people as commodities, as grim as that sounds). More on that soon…

Thank you for these excellent questions. We’ll continue to ponder them, and will be as transparent as possible as we continue refining the texts for the show. All best! ~Bryan

An important theme: we are looking forward to hearing more. One point I was hoping to see addressed here is the stability of the identifications of the Magi: the Moorish King is occasionally identified as Caspar, as with a depiction by Hendrick Heerschop in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. There seems to be some slippage between them…worth noting!

When will this interesting exhibition open? What is the actual timeframe that you expect to cover? I am myself working on a painting of Balthazar from the late 1600s that we recently acquired. That is surely too late for you but perhaps there will be opportunities for exchange. In doing Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe I did not encounter any depictions of A black Balthazar as a portrait and would appreciate learning if you have. Many thanks for doing this blog. Joaneath Spicer